Hate

I Hate the Dorms

Dorms, dorms, the musical fruit. The longer you stay, the more likely you are to make up insipid subheads like this.

The steamed potatoes are indistinguishable from the chicken cordon bleu and the bathroom walls. It's all chalk-hued crap, cloudy as a milky bong hit. The colorless dorms have color in all the wrong places. The squeaky next-door sex is bright red. The urine in the stairwell is clear from beer. The lounge floor is a dingy stained gray, with brown and pink ulcers. The vomit in the urinals is a happy Jackson Pollack rainbow. Back to the springy dorm-bed next-door sex. There's nothing quite like sexmon the other side of a thin wall at 4 A.M. on a midterm Monday, followed by a Round 2 at 6:30. Then a reggae bomb bumped at 7:00. Ain't no need, man. Ain't no need for the loud reggae early. Jah love.

And unflushed toilets. And PBR.

Mr. Reggae leaves for Seattle for the weekend, locks his door, and forgets to turn off his set alarm, which is tuned to "The Hawk," a radio station I'm sure was used to torture the POWs in Kosovo so far, far away. Things like that are not supposed to happen here. But they do, as half of our hung-over hall has been jolted from peaceful slumber many times by "The Hawk" turned up mind-shatteringly-loud. You haven't really lived in the dorms until you've joined your still semi-lit, baggy-eyed friends in trying to knock down a neighbor's door at 6:00 in the morning. Until you've heard "Owner of a Lonely Heart" cranked to 11, you have no basis for your Hate: no grounding, no firm foundation. This Hate we have transcends simple sleeplessness. It's all of "Owner of a Lonely Heart" focused like a laser beam and refracted through a prism into a full-fledged Rainbow of Hatred. Not everything expected is fair.

I've seen folks break from the Hate. They just snap and mumble. Droolhits the dirty floor. Foaming mouths issue forth bile in liquid and verbal forms. Hope falls like petals, wafting in the Hammy's-smelling breeze, sinking into the muck, never to be known again. Kierkegaard wrote that "men are divided into two great classes: those who predominately live in hope, and those who predominately live inrecollection."

Recollection, baby. It's all about the recollection. Even our memories are waning, though, swept under the rug by Dope and Hate. The pain is as big as a Bob Ross tree.

Most deal with the Hate and the loss of hope by living in asubstance-induced stupor. The Pabst flows like wine. An enjoyable pastime is building Dope clouds thick enough to set off fire alarms in the wee hours, which is a double joy: not only does one get ridiculously stoned and numb, one also has the pleasure of waking up the substance-free hall in the middle of the frigid rainy night and forcing them to cross the street barefooted in their Winnie the Pooh jammies. Gotta love the Straight Edge spiked kids who wear Winnie-the-Pooh to bed.

If the clouded mind rides the shotgun of Hate, stifling monotony is behind the wheel. This is made plain by the somewhat-limited options encompassing life outside of class in Eugene: a) Do homework. b) Get "high." c) Sleep. d) Weep. e) Use the toilet. f) Climb up the stained walls. g) Throw Mickey's grenades off the PLC roof, trying to hit the little pool in front of the library. h) Yell. Given these few choices, once one has made it through the cycle four or five times by October, what is one to do? I don't know. For that, we turn to your friend and mine, Uncle Cid: "I fucking hate the dorms. I hate the Gestapo fluorescent lights that won't turn off in the hallway. I hate 7-11 and the sketchy walk back. I hate blacklights and blacklight posters. I hate that heater in my room that just won't turn off. I hate rain. Fuck OPS and their anti-skateboard policy. Fuck Eugene Public Services and their jackhammering at 8 A.M. on Monday morning of Finals. I hate OSPIRG, OPS, RAs, RDs, GTFs, CWs, and the EPD. I hate having to take boxes to the loading dock, only to get locked out in the rain and have to walk all the way around Hamilton in sandals. I hate Tingle Hall. I hate roommates and assholes with singles. I hate the mail room. I hate OSPIRG and its mindless sheep dronefollowers. I hate white lighters. I hate the "beer tax," i.e. the MIP. I hate the first sunburn after my first winter in Oregon. I love Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n' Roll and the Vortex. I hate ashtrays. I hate that smell coming from Dan's room. I hate four floors, locking doors and 2nd floor whores. I hate quiet hours. I hate the invasion of privacy over Spring Break to change the blinds. I'd rather have watched them change the blinds to prove that they're working for ME. I hate the shower drain gunk. I hate bricks and Designated Smoking Areas. I hate University-sponsored events. I hate spit in the water fountain. I hate white-cappers and sorority girls and Hammy's. I hate the fire doors. I hate footmarks at 14 dollars each." But, umm, what should we do about it, umm, Uncle Cid?

"Climb the fuckin' walls! That's right! Plant each foot squarely onopposite walls. Hoist yourself up to a point to plant your hands. Repeat until you reach the ceiling and become fucking Spiderman. At which point, it is your job to search out and conquer all Evil you encounter glued to the ceiling of your hallway like so much semen. That's right, you have my permission to destroy everything. Fuckin', those fuckin' air fresheners that mace you every five minutes or when hippies walk by! Destroy the fire alarm! Destroy the 'In Case of Fire Break Glass' glass! But beeeeeeeee careful! When I put my foot through that glass it was a scary moment, and they'll charge you the 14. They. Who's They? Fuck They!" So Uncle Cid advocates option (f).

Back in 19th-century Denmark, Kierkegaard didn't have all those acronyms to worry about.

And Uncle Cid brought up a very necessary topic of discussion-namely, theshower drain gunk. Many of the gripes the venerable Uncle put forth,though valid, are unlikely to be dealt with and/or unpractical to solve,but I think he's onto something with the foul showers. Lord knows that the janitors, sorry, custodians get hell from students daily, and this hell comes in many shapes and sizes, from verbal abuse to insulting graffiti. But these showers... These showers are the Seventh Circle of Hell, and the Inferno's unholy boundaries are ever-expanding. They creep forward methodically, and the fungus has appeared in the dank bathroom corners and in my most profane nightmares. It... must... all... be... stopped... We live on campus. Isn't that sad? We are beasts of burden, gleefully toting the University on our youthful backs. We smile for the cameras; our smiles show up in the residence hall brochures to lure other unsuspecting doe-eyed young'uns. But when our usefulness is used up, we are tossed into the gutter like an empty 40 oz. bottle. We stop smiling; the school disowns us, renouncing our existence and our spark. It's like what was done to Boxer the horse in Orwell's Animal Farm. Living in the dorms is better than being sent to the glue factory, I suppose. Animal House = Animal Farm.

Our Social Security number defines our existence. We're all numbers here. And we didn't even get to choose the number.

We're all searching for a cause to affect. We're all looking to make an impact, all gung-ho and full of vim and vigor. But the dorms shame us. The dorms leave us naked and shivering and strung-out in the fetal-position on the Ramen-encrusted hall floor. Our boundless enthusiasm is turned against us, transforming us, eventually, into bitter upperclassman husks, shells of our bright-eyed former selves. Strawberry fields forever.

Next year the dorm-ridden will be burdened even more. Housing willinstigate a plan in which, in the name of "doing students a favor," thenumber of meals each student is credited each week will be reduced from 19 to 16. A student wishing to eat three meals a day, supposedly necessary for a good education, would either pay the higher rate or run out of meals every Friday. How is this "doing students a favor"? It seems to me that the favor is to the University coffers.

But that's another story.

Aram Marataram is currently in hiding, and a staff writer for the OregonCommentator. Uncle Cid is a Hate studies major and one angry muthaphukka.